If the Protection of Information Bill is enacted, it would prevent the publication of stories that expose corruption in the government.

The bill stipulates sentences of up to five years in prison for anyone who receives, publishes or passes on classified information.

A reporter who found that a classified document had been pushed under his door by someone trying to expose corruption, would face prison if he did not immediately hand the document to the police.

Lawyers at yesterday’s public hearings on the Protection of Information Bill told The Times that a law derived from the bill in its present form would probably have prevented the investigation of national police commissioner Jackie Selebi’s alleged links with crime bosses, the exposure of the discredited Browse Mole report on Jacob Zuma’s purported foreign funders and the Travelgate fraud by MPs who abused their travel privileges.

Exposés of corruption related to the arms deal could have been swept under the carpet, and even publication of Health Hinister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s conviction for theft, and reports about her behaviour during a hospital stay, could have been blocked.

“This is draconian stuff,” said Dario Milo, a lawyer representing Avusa Media, owners of The Times and the Sunday Times.

Milo said: “The bill allows for the massive invasion of political space.

“Because it allows for over-classification, many of the public-interest stories we have seen recently would not have been possible under this legislation.”

Cecil Burgess, ANC chairman of an ad hoc committee steering the Protection of Information Bill through parliament, said public hearings were likely to be extended by half a day to allow late submissions by union federation Cosatu and the SA Communist Party.

“What we are dealing with here … are some of the more serious threats that the government has been facing in very recent times — the leaking of highly confidential documents,” he told The Times.

So far, the draft law has had a rough ride, but ANC MPs rallied yesterday to support its much tighter control of state secrets.

Ismail Vadi, an ANC MP and chairman of parliament’s communications portfolio committee, argued that information had to be more tightly controlled because journalists who came into possession of secret government information might be foreign spies.

Though the government’s law advisers say journalists and whistle-blowers would still be able to cite public interest as a legal defence, the bill makes no specific provision for the condoning of the transfer, possession or publication of classified information on grounds of public interest.

“I don’t think that we should ask of our citizens that they go to jail when they act in the public interest,” said Alison Tilley, of the Open Democracy Advice Centre.

Experts testifying yesterday agreed that legislation was needed to protect information, but almost unanimously they criticised the proposed law’s overly wide reach and low classification thresholds.